Rainbow Valley eBook

“I wish we were a blacksmith’s children,”
protested Faith angrily, hunting for her stockings.
“Then people wouldn’t expect us
to be better than other children. Just look
at the holes in my heels. Mary darned them all
up before she went away, but they’re as bad
as ever now. Una, get up. I can’t
get the breakfast alone. Oh, dear. I wish
father and Jerry were home. You wouldn’t
think we’d miss father much—­we don’t
see much of him when he is home. And yet everything
seems gone. I must run in and see how Aunt Martha
is.”

“Is she any better?” asked Una, when Faith
returned.

“No, she isn’t. She’s groaning
with the misery still. Maybe we ought to tell
Dr. Blythe. But she says not—­she never
had a doctor in her life and she isn’t going
to begin now. She says doctors just live by
poisoning people. Do you suppose they do?”

“Well, we’ll have to rub Aunt Martha’s
back again after breakfast. We’d better
not make the flannels as hot as we did yesterday.”

Faith giggled over the remembrance. They had
nearly scalded the skin off poor Aunt Martha’s
back. Una sighed. Mary Vance would have
known just what the precise temperature of flannels
for a misery back should be. Mary knew everything.
They knew nothing. And how could they learn,
save by bitter experience for which, in this instance,
unfortunate Aunt Martha had paid?

The preceding Monday Mr. Meredith had left for Nova
Scotia to spend his short vacation, taking Jerry with
him. On Wednesday Aunt Martha was suddenly seized
with a recurring and mysterious ailment which she
always called “the misery,” and which was
tolerably certain to attack her at the most inconvenient
times. She could not rise from her bed, any movement
causing agony. A doctor she flatly refused to
have. Faith and Una cooked the meals and waited
on her. The less said about the meals the better—­yet
they were not much worse than Aunt Martha’s had
been. There were many women in the village who
would have been glad to come and help, but Aunt Martha
refused to let her plight be known.

“You must worry on till I kin git around,”
she groaned. “Thank goodness, John isn’t
here. There’s a plenty o’ cold biled
meat and bread and you kin try your hand at making
porridge.”

The girls had tried their hand, but so far without
much success. The first day it had been too thin.
The next day so thick that you could cut it in slices.
And both days it had been burned.

“I hate porridge,” said Faith viciously.
“When I have a house of my own I’m never
going to have a single bit of porridge in it.”

“What’ll your children do then?”
asked Una. “Children have to have porridge
or they won’t grow. Everybody says so.”

“They’ll have to get along without it
or stay runts,” retorted Faith stubbornly.
“Here, Una, you stir it while I set the table.
If I leave it for a minute the horrid stuff will burn.
It’s half past nine. We’ll be late
for Sunday School.”